iFixit's Chief Information Architect Miroslav Djuric notes that swimsuit season may be over, (at least in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere) but Apple's new Late 2012 iMac has been working on its beach bod. Slimmed down to a wafer-thin 5mm at its edges, the newest iMac iteration of is by far the slimmest of its kin, Djuric observes, adding: "We are very curious what sort of diet could cause such a drastic change, so we opened it up to find out." Unfortunately, the iFixIt team were not happy with what they found.

Miroslav Djuric reports:

The late 2012 iMac 21.5" - code-named EMC 2544 - is an exercise in disappointment for us. We were quite worried when we saw that super-thin bezel during Apple's keynote, and unfortunately we were correct: the glass and LCD are now glued to the iMac's frame with incredibly strong adhesive. Gone are the lovely magnets that held the glass in place in iMacs of yesteryear.

We don't want to be sad Eeyores through this entire teardown report, but unfortunately the bad news doesn't stop there. Once inside, folks can still replace the RAM, hard drive, and CPU, but they'll have to remove the entire logic board before doing so -- everything is located on the back of the board, nooked right into the iMac's slim frame. Consequently, this year's unit received a super-sad 3 out of 10 repairability score, down from a healthy 7 on last year's unit.

Hackers, tinkerers, and repairers be forewarned: get last year's model if you'd like to alter your machine in any way.

Highlights (if you can call them that):

(*) To our dismay, we must break out our trusty heat gun and guitar picks to get past the adhesive holding down the glass and LCD.

(*) We were fairly surprised to see that the new iMac's LCD sports the same model number as last year -- LM215WF3 from LG -- even though the LCD is 5 mm thinner.

(*) By switching from a traditional 3.5" desktop hard drive to a 2.5" laptop drive, Apple designers were able to free up lot of real estate inside the iMac. Apple turned to HGST -- formerly Hitachi, now a Western Digital company -- to manage the iMac's spinning storage.

(*) A rubbery housing is lightly adhered to the edges of the hard drive beneath the upper and lower hard plastic bezels. This design is far different from what we've seen before. Since the internal components are more tightly packed than before, small vibrations may carry through more components. The rubber housing dampens the vibrations from the spinning hard drive so they are not perpetuated throughout the device.

(*) A new fan layout! Apple is changing things up quite a bit and has moved from multiple small fans to a single centralized fan. "1" may be the loneliest number, but removing 2/3 of the fans goes a long way towards saving space. Judging by the orientation of the fan, we gather that it draws cool air from the bottom vents, then blows hot air out of the grating in the back of the iMac.

(*) The webcams in iMacs of yesteryear have always been connected to the logic board with long snaking cables that were relatively fragile; that is no longer the case. A ribbon cable we can only describe as "beefy" keeps the FaceTime HD camera in touch with the logic board.

(*) The newest iMac features not one, but two microphones. Dual microphone technology has been utilized in mobile devices for years to cut out background noise during phone calls. Now, the same idea is being applied here to improve sound quality during intimate FaceTime chats with your mother.

(*) The speakers may look simple, but removing them is nerve-wracking. For seemingly no reason other than to push our buttons, Apple has added a notch to the bottom of the speaker assemblies that makes them harder-than-necessary to remove.

(*) Good news: You can upgrade the iMac's RAM. Bad news: You have to unglue your screen and remove the logic board in order to do so. This is just barely less-terrible than having soldered RAM that's completely non-removable.

(*) After a short hiatus, Broadcom is back to bring WLAN capabilities to the iMac. A Broadcom BCM4331 single-chip WLAN solution dominates the tiny AirPort card.

(*) Off comes the honkin' heat sink! And along with it -- the CPU??? The new iMac uses a spring-loaded, FCLGA1155 socket to make all those little electrical signals go into, and out of, the CPU: http://bit.ly/QUCPG6

We purchased the "bargain-basement" version of the iMac. We're assuming that the more-expensive version -- one that has the built-to-order Fusion drive option -- has this connector soldered onto the board, and a 128GB SSD is placed into said connector.

While Apple introduced the new iMac last month, Apple only started shipping the new 21.5-inch iMac today (and won't start shipping the new 27-inch iMac until next month). The new iMacs, along with a redesigned body, feature Intel's new Ivy Bridge processors. How do these new processors perform compared to the Sandy Bridge processors found in the previous-generation iMac? How does the new iMac perform compared to Apple's other desktop computers?

Tech.pinions' Ben Bajarin says he's got the sense that he's growing apart from his trusty MacBook, which is causing him mixed feelings of gratitude, sorrow, and an understanding that it is for the better. Bajarin says his relationship with notebooks peaked in 2011 with the 13-inch Macbook Air refresh which I at the time considered the perfect notebook for him. However, of late they've been been growing apart, and the iPad is the culprit.

The Mac Observer's John Martellaro notes tha the saga of Windows 8 continued last week with a gloomy outlook for traditional PCs, with more cuts in analyst forecasts for Microsoft's growth in 2013. Martellaro maintains that PCs are in trouble, with customers bolting to svelte, light pure tablets, while Microsoft has just announced how power hungry and expensive its forthcoming Surface Pro tablet will be.

Martellaro recaps how Microsoft ignored what happened to Apple when it tried to push some iOS-ification agenda down the throats of its users, observing that Windows 8, is fully ossified with the result that Windows 8 is euphemistically "off to an awkward start."

After shipping Windows 8 tablet computer with a detachable keyboard) that doesn't run x86 Windows binaries, Microsoft has announced that the Surface Pro, the real Microsoft tablet that does run legacy Windows software, will be more expensive than many full-featured PC laptops, and even the cheapest MacBooks, and offer have half the battery life of the "consumer" Surface RT. With 128 GB of storage and a keyboard, prospective Surface Pro buyers are looking at over US$1,100 plus even more more if you want MS Office.

WinSuperSite's Paul Thurrott disagrees that Microsoft is behind the times and on the wrong track. He acknowledges that Windows 8 off to an allegedly awkward start, but still thinks Microsoft's overall strategy is sound, and notwithstanding John Martellaro's horse and buggy analogy (see above item), that Windows 8's double duty tasking as a desktop and mobile OS in order to preserve both the Windows legacy and MS Office actually makes sense with a legacy combined user base of well over a billion people. He maintains that being able to bring those people forward and create a new mobile platform in the same OS is arguably one of Microsoft's technical greatest achievements, and says that when Microsoft moves from Metro + desktop to just Metro in the future, it should be remembered that the reason that even could happen is that Microsoft marketing focused on USB ports and x86 desktop applications first, stuff actual customers actually care about.

Thurrott admits there is a lot of hand-wringing going on these days in the Microsoft camp, but contends that most of it is unnecessary and that none of the problems are unfixable.

Apple has re-issued its 10.8.2 update for specific Mac systems after having originally released a specific version of the updater for the 2012 Mac Mini, iMac, and 13-inch MacBook Pro models, then quickly pulled it more than a week ago.

New features include:
 Facebook
 Single sign on for Facebook
 Facebook as an option when sharing links and photos
 Facebook friends' contact information and profile pictures in Contacts
 Facebook notifications in Notification Center

Game Center
 Share scores to Facebook, Twitter, Mail, or Messages
vFacebook friends are included in Game Center friend recommendations
 Facebook Like button for games
 Challenge friends to beat your score or achievement

Other new features
 Power Nap support for MacBook Air (Late 2010)
viMessages sent to your phone number now appear in Messages on your Mac
 From Safari and Mail on your Mac you can add passes to Passbook on your iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 6

New shared Reminders lists
 FaceTime now receives calls sent to your phone number
 New sort options allow you to sort notes by title, the date you edited them, and when you created them
 Dictation now supports Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Korean, Canadian English, Canadian French, and Italian
 The Dictionary application now includes a French definition dictionary
 Sina Weibo profile photos can now be added to Contacts

This update also includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac, including the following fixes:
 An option to discard the changes in the original document when choosing Save As
 Unsent drafts are opened automatically when launching Mail
 Receive Twitter notifications for mentions and replies from anyone
 URLs are shortened when sending tweets from Notification Center
 Notifications are disabled when AirPlay Mirroring is being used
 SSL support for Google searches from the Smart Search Field in Safari
 New preference to have Safari launch with previously open webpages
 Graphics performance and reliability enhancements
 USB 3 reliability enhancements

The Times of India reports that American computer science engineer Tony Fadell, who created the iPod has revealed how Apple gave more importance to development of Macintosh computers, and not the portable media player, citing a Telegraph interview with Fadell discussing his experience of working with Apple and Steve Jobs, and noting that the iPod team he built was largely taken up with "the day job" of building the Macintosh.

Mozilla Thunderbird 17 comes with a new button on the right hand side, at the top of the window; called the Menu Button it provides more options to customize the user interface.

Beyond this mainstream Thunderbird release and as planned, mozilla.org are releasing the second Thunderbird Extended Support Release (ESR) targeted at large organizations. This ESR version is not only a security and bugs fix, but it contains all the features that have been added to Thunderbird since January 2012

New in Thunderbird 17:

 Thunderbird Menu Button on the Top Right
- By default, Thunderbird 17 replaces the Menu Bar (the toolbar with the File, Edit and View menus) with a new Thunderbird Menu button.

 Menu Button
- A simple click on this button shows all the menus.

Minor changes

 Folder size added to folder's properties
- It is now possible to check the size of a mail folder on the disk without installing an add-on. You will find it by following these steps: control-click on any folder, select Properties... and then General information tab.